I’m excited about this official announcement! Beamsville, Ontario – X Zone Lures has partnered with Bassmaster Elite Series angler Brandon Lester of Fayetteville, TN, to create a new Pro Series line of soft plastic baits. X Zone Lures has helped anglers catch smallmouth for over a decade with its Slammer and Swammer hand-poured baits. Their […]

Adapted from my monthly column in Coastal Angler/The Angler magazine Growing up in southern middle Tennessee I was very fortunate to have a lot of really good fisheries within a couple hours of my house. I had my choice between the Tennessee River lakes like Guntersville, Wheeler, and Wilson or the typical highland reservoirs located […]

Well the 2015 Bassmaster Elite Series season has come and gone. At the start of the year had you said I would finish in 37th place and in the 2016 Bassmaster Classic I would say it was an okay year. Had you told me I would fall down to that spot after sitting in the […]

This article was published in Bass Angler Magazine. In case you don’t get that publication I want to share it here. My rookie season on the Bassmaster Elite Series was nothing short of a dream come true. Through 9 tournaments in I made six Top 50 cuts. My best finish came at the final stop of […]

The April Elite Series event on Table Rock Lake was a tournament that I was really looking forward to. It is a deep and clear highland reservoir much like Tims Ford and Lake Normandy that I grew up fishing back home in Tennessee. I did my research going into the tournament and confirmed that I […]

They are calling us freshmen this year instead of “rookies” since the experience level of the Elite Series newcomers is so high. I look around and there are Classic champs, FLW Tour and FLW Cup champions and guys I have watched on TV and looked up to since I was old enough to read. Maybe […]

Fishing the B.A.S.S Elite series is something that many of us strive to do and at a young age, we set out to “be a professional fisherman”. With that being said, fishing the Bassmaster Elite Series is something you have to qualify for and it doesn’t come easy. What does that mean? It means you […]

Instead of deciding on the type of job he wanted to have when he grew up, Brandon Lester decided at an early age he’d simply rather not work. “When I was about 10 or 11 I’d watch Bill Dance and Roland Martin and Jimmy Houston on TV catching fish for a living and I remember […]

When the smoke cleared after the final Bass Pro Shops Bassmaster Southern Open of 2013 at Logan Martin Lake, 24-year-old Brandon Lester of Fayetteville, Tenn., was the last man standing in the Opens AOY race. The fact that several Elite Series pros participated in the Southern Opens this year gives Lester’s accomplishment even greater credibility. […]

The Bassmaster Southern Opens were a done deal relatively early this year, as the third and final event on the circuit concluded in mid-May. That could be a real advantage for points champion Brandon Lester. The Top 5 points-earners from each of the three Open divisions are guaranteed slots in the Elite Series the following […]